Treasury roles, covering missions such as prevention and investigation of counterfeiting of U.S. currency and U.S. treasury bonds notes and investigation of major fraud.

Protective roles, ensuring the safety of current and former national leaders and their families, such as the President, past Presidents, Vice Presidents, presidential candidates, foreign embassies (per an agreement with the US State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) Office of Foreign Missions (OFM)), etc.

The Secret Service's initial responsibility was to investigate crimes related to the Treasury and then evolved into the United States' first domestic intelligence and counterintelligence agency. Many of the agency's missions were later taken over by subsequent agencies such as the FBI, ATF, and IRS.

The agency combines the resources of academia; the private sector; and Federal, State, and Local law enforcement agencies to combat computer-based threats to the U.S. financial payment systems and critical infrastructures. In addition, these combined resources allow ECTF to identify and address potential cybervulnerabilities before the criminal element exploits them. This proactive approach has successfully prevented cyber attacks that otherwise would have resulted in large-scale financial losses for the American public and U.S.-based companies or disruption of critical infrastructures.

Since onlinechild pornography crime is not a core violation for the agency, it has pursued fewer investigations involving this crime than other crimes, such as counterfeiting. However, some USSS field offices with a background in these areas as well as digital forensic capabilities investigate these crimes.